


You're for Me and I'm for You

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Some soulmates just don't work out, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Soulmates, Though plenty do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 02:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17112782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: It's a soulmate AU. ...Actually, it's a bunch of different soulmate AUs. Lots of them. All the ones I could think of basically.





	You're for Me and I'm for You

Luther didn’t have a soul-mark. It was nothing strange, some people didn’t. His soulmate was not going to be born or had died before he was born or something had just gone wrong for them. It happened.

The Lion... might have had one. If he did, he would keep it safe, keep it hidden. Luther knew his nature well enough to know that. Luther didn’t press, because he found himself hoping the Lion didn’t either. No distractions. No name on his skin that had claim on him. He already had an Emperor, an order of knights and then a Legion of them, a crusade to prosecute. Romance did not seem like him.

Some people didn’t need a soulmate or romantic partner to be complete in themselves. Luther had never particularly felt that way, he wished things were otherwise to himself and his own lack felt like a mistake, but the Lion could be.

‘The Saroshi beast, the Melachim, it said told me I am a fool who would send even my own soulmate from my sight because I am blind.’

‘Lion, I…’ It was all too raw still, the fight they were having, what he had nearly done only a few hours ago. ‘I heard.’ In retrospect, no one else had reacted to the words at the time, but they had been busy. He also faintly recalled a different wording than what the Lion relayed, but even his mental conditioning had been upset by the confusion and broken geometries of what had happened down there. Regardless, of course the words had been directed to the Lion. Primarchs commanded attention.

‘Luther, come here.’ The Lion wouldn’t meet his eye even after pulling off his helmet, ripping apart armour seals with none of the care the mastercrafted work deserved and with no aid in the hangar empty of all but servitors going about their pre-programmed duties. He tossed aside his gorget, pulled his long hair aside with a gauntlet. ‘What does it say?’

The Lion had always been private, even as a feral youth. He did not like to be touched. He could bathe himself, trim his own hair if he just had a sharp enough knife. There, on the nape of his neck, was the faint name he had been hiding.

‘This can’t… I don’t have a matching one.’ That didn’t happen. The Lion’s name should have been on his skin. A one-sided love like that would have been too tragic, and, by every tree in the old forests, it was not one-sided.

The Lion turned his face him, hiding the mark again. His hand rose to barely caress the side of Luther’s face, a slight blemish under his beard. ‘It’s just a birthmark.’

‘Is it?’

A birthmark that looked a little like a soul-mark, perhaps, but just a meaningless jot of pigment. A mark that looked a bit, if you thought about it that way, like the line used to represent the Terran numeral “I”.

Luther laughed, and laughed until he cried. The Lion looked at him with complete and utter incomprehension at his reaction, then he seemed to set that aside and make a decision. The Lion’s kiss was sure and desperate, and they both vowed that they would not be so blind again.

*

They were sharp and ugly, like wounds carved into his skin. Still, they were soul-marks.

The first problem had been that Magnus had no idea what they said. They were not in the language of Prospero nor the older, formal tongue they had brought from the stars. The alphabet was coarse, each stroke like a cut. Still, Magnus researched. Perhaps they were mystic runes, and some fellow practitioner of the art would be demonstrating them when they met. He did not understand the magic in them, they were not his kind of magic, but he was sure he would have the context at the time. Not understanding he’d found his soulmate, not understanding what they said, that would be too embarrassing.

He found similar signs in a book deep in the libraries of Tizca, runes of the ancient Nords of Terra. His soulmate was, perhaps, an anthropologist, a great scholar of culture then. He could translate them only approximately, a few of the words, but they said something like “You have seen great wisdom, before when you were still a kid.”

Leman Russ’ first words to him were “If you traded that eye for wisdom, then why do you still have your head up a goat’s ass?”

Magnus replied, “Do you have mange or do you just never bathe?”

Russ opened his mouth in a toothy grin, and cast aside his fur cloak to show the soul-mark wrapping around his arm in between tribal tattoos, in the elegant script of Prospero.

“I hate you,” Magnus announced.

*

“I love you.” Such inappropriate words. Such a farce. Someone would tell him that, him--the monster, the Night Haunter--and it would be the last words they’d ever speak to him. Likely that they would never speak at all, given who he was. He displayed the words openly: to mock the sheer absurdity of them.

They would be, he considered most likely, spoken in his presence from one person to someone else. One person out there who could have been his soulmate, if he hadn’t been who he was, what he was. If he had deserved a soulmate, before his soul had become a blackened, broken thing. Hopefully they would be happy with whoever it was they loved, he thought on his good days. Hopefully the things he did would allow them the luxury of such a life.

Or perhaps it would be Stockholm syndrome, or one of these tragic monsters genebred to love him. He hated the devotion, hoped whoever it was would just hurry up and say the words and die to be over with.

“We did right.” It was written dark and proud on Guilliman’s arm. The words were a solid weight. This was who he was supposed to be: someone whose soulmate would say those words to him at the last. He must be worthy of them. He must deserve them.

The first time Roboute told Konrad he loved him, he froze in his arms. “Don’t say that,” he said. Not until the end. Not until it was over because any time could be the last and he wasn’t ready to give this up, to lose this man who had convinced him things could change for the better.

“Ah,” said Guilliman, that brain of his understanding instantly what he meant and his heart having no doubt this was it, even though you couldn’t know until after it was over. “I won’t then. Not again. Not yet.”

*

Horus had been aware of the countdown all his life. It had been almost a surprise when he met his father and learned his origin as a child and that timer hadn’t stopped. That had seemed the most monumental thing that had ever happened to him or could, but then he had been too young to know what a soulmate was and how that differed from a purpose. Both consumed the soul entirely once you knew it, but were not the same thing.

Now, on Baal Secundus, it was almost up. This was it. He couldn’t be nervous--primarchs didn’t get nervous. There were plenty of people who would have been desperately overjoyed to be his soulmate, he reminded himself--he had the best reputation of any primarch, he wasn’t a burden to his father and he wouldn’t be to his soulmate and he allowed himself no weaknesses. The mantra was familiar. Confident, charming, sweep someone off his feet.

‘I’ve been waiting,’ said the most beautiful voice he’s ever heard. ‘I saw many things to come, but you were the easiest to know the time and place of.’

An angel--some kind of ceremonial armour giving him the appearance of wings. A vision of beauty and grace, yet also martial strength and warrior’s passion.

Horus couldn’t find his voice. He was flawed, trying so hard but he could never reach such heights, just had to misdirect so no one could see. ‘I’ve been looking.’

*

‘I want this.’ It seemed obscene--getting a tattoo that matched someone else’s soul-mark, but Ferrus was adamant and stomped right over social convention to get it. ‘It’s not even faking or lying, the purpose of such rules. It’s just a fix.’

‘I believe you. I know.’

That moment when they had clasped hands in the forge, grinning at each other. Fulgrim had pulled off his shirt to shake the sweat off and Ferrus had stopped cold, a look of shock on his blunt features. Ferrus waving his silver hands around, explaining, _I used to have a soul-mark on my hand, before it got covered up. It looked_ exactly _like that._

Fulgrim did the work himself. The best inks, adamantite needles that could get under a primarch’s skin. No extra flares, no elaborate adornment, Ferrus reminded him. As if Ferrus getting this tattoo in the exact same place his was, over his heart, wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t the original, it wasn’t perfect and flawless, but it would have to be enough to take his lover’s hand in his and put his other on his chest and see how they matched. Ferrus didn’t seem bothered by this in the slightest, and they were soulmates and that was what mattered.

*

It took a moment to sink in. Something had changed, somehow. A chance meeting on a campaign that had seemed likely to be a chore of begrudging cooperation brought on by proximity became something more. The world seemed richer, the gunmetal grey of his sons’ armour and the black and white of the Raven’s sons now vivid and alive to Perturabo. Corax eyed the shadows he had been standing in, seeing new dimensions in them, the play of light and angle somehow different.

The world came into focus around them, quietly, unexpectedly. A moment of understated revelation. The yellow hazard lines on a pauldron. The red outline of a squad mark. The green of a weed miraculously still growing in the dull rubble. Colour.

So this is what people have been going on about all these years, they both thought.

The sudden realisation you are not forgotten or overlooked and will never need to be alone again.

*

‘The khan doesn’t have a soulmate, does he?’ Ilya asked Yesugei once. She was curious, not judgemental. She didn’t have one herself, never had, and she found people bemoaning her lack a worse thing than the thing itself. Jaghatai Khan, in her observation, had no close friends, even among his brothers, except perhaps Horus or Magnus, who everyone knew already had soulmates. She wondered if he felt like a third wheel, or if he didn’t miss it, like her.

‘Not anymore,’ he agreed.

‘I am sorry for his loss,’ she said politely. She wondered who it was but doubted she’d get an answer. For a primarch it could have been anyone, anywhere in the galaxy, meant for him, but somehow however they were supposed to meet never happened, something went wrong, and they died. It happened. Or, if it had been one of the brothers that none spoke of but you could hardly miss if you could count to twenty even if you needed all your toes to do it, well… no one answered questions about them.

‘No. It wasn’t like that,’ Yesugei corrected. ‘His soulmate is alive, but they are not…’ He struggled to put words to it. ‘On Chogoris, there is red string of fate connecting soulmates. And the khan, he cut it. He would not be chained. He would not be owned. He says if they fell in love, then he would not mind being in love. But they are not even friends. What does it matter if they could fit together and complement each other perfectly? This they have not chosen. Lord Mortarion’s thoughts on this I do not know well, but he never objected and has never been anything but distance to the khan.’

‘That’s him alright,’ said Ilya, because there was little else to say. ‘I hope he’s happy anyway, complete in himself.’ She winced at that, she’d heard the condescension of it to many times herself. ‘That’s his choice.’

*

The tattoos wouldn’t take and no one was sure why. The priest-alchemists suspected it had something to do with how fast the boy healed. That didn’t expect the scars, though, which came without reason and cut too deep to heal without mark.

‘It’s not me,’ Kor Phaeron snapped, which did nothing to still most people’s guesses that he hurt the boy when no one was looking. However, he was cleverer than he was defensive and spun an official story to it. ‘The child bears the weight of the whole world on his shoulders, so when it bleeds, he bleeds. This is the blow the heretics laid against the followers of the Truth at Aliqr. This the slashed throats of the faithful upon the Hill of Iaso.’

Whether anyone else in the temple really believed him, Lorgar accepted this explanation. He knew his adopted father was not cutting him. Many things around Lorgar were supernatural, gifts or burdens from God, so why not this?

Honestly, he thought little of the phenomena during adulthood until one of his brothers, newly introduced, decided to punch him in the face.

‘Ow, what was that for?’ he asked as Ferrus and Dorn bodily held Angron back.

‘It’s you! Give back my scars!’

‘What?’ Lorgar was a primarch, so he didn’t usually feel like he had wandered into a conversation halfway without any context.

Angron tore at the folds of shawl he wore above his kilt, bearing his arms. They were, as implied, unscarred. They did however have patterns on them so familiar it took Lorgar a moment to realise how out of place they were.

‘You have my tattoos and I have your scars,’ he surmised. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose and have no idea why we’d be mystically bonded that way.’

‘I do,’ cut in Magnus, surprising no one who’d met him. ‘Of course, most people have the sense to write on their skin in washable ink to find each other.’ Angron growled. Lorgar waited for Magnus to get to his point, knowing he’d eventually wear himself out explaining how much smarter he was than everyone else. ‘I suppose both of you bound yourselves on planets where this particular phenomena was unusual rather than in the common vernacular for you to immediately understand how these things work. You’re soulmates.’

‘I want my scars more than I want some pansy-boy. They’re _mine_. The only thing a slave has.’

‘Soulmates aren’t perfect. Or what you expect. Or even--’ Even Magnus couldn’t think of a word to explain the look of annoyance, exasperation, and fondness that crossed his face at the thought of Russ.

They all looked back at Lorgar as he took a combat knife to his own arm. ‘I’m not sure how the keloids on my skin will shift the position before they heal enough to transfer onto you, but they should be close.’

Angron looked at him with sheer, bewildered stillness before the light of comprehension dawned on him. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. That would be alright. Lorgar too thought this could be alright.

*

Vulkan had always had the scar. It was hard to tell apart from his later war scars or the ritual scars and brands of the Promethean cult, but he knew it from the others.

He accepted his soulmate was already dead before he was found, before he even emerged from his gestation pod. It happened. Having a soulmate wasn’t the be-all-end-all of love, even of romantic love. He did not linger over it.

It was neither the first nor the last disappointment the twins suffered, but it was the worst. They had looked for so long. They had hoped.

The red mark, half on one body, half on the other, turning black one day left no ambiguity, though. They had been lost too long, looked too long. Their soulmate had lived and died without them, and there was no going back. They never spoke of it.

*

It took Dorn years to realise the cold was someone else’s. He was an iceworlder. He refrigerated the Phalanx to his own preferences, when he wasn’t on Inwit itself.

The pain was more of a shock. It lasted hours, days over months and years. It more clearly was not his, for he had never been wounded, nothing in his life ever coming close. His grandfather worried for him, that his soulmate might be dying, but Dorn reassured him. The pain felt clean. It felt right, purposeful, transformative.

When he learned later what went into making an Astartes, he understood. When he gripped the forearm of his new first captain in greeting and felt the pressure of it mirrored in his own arm, he knew.

**Author's Note:**

> In case all the premises weren't obvious: 1) soulmate's name on your skin, 2) first words your soulmate says to you on your skin, 3) last words your soulmate says to you on your skin, 3) countdown until you meet your soulmate, 4) matching soul-marks, 5) start to see in colour instead of black-and-white after you meet your soulmate, 6) red string of fate tying soulmates, 7) marks on one soulmate's skin show up on the other instead, 8) soul-mark that becomes a scar after the other partner dies (the two lost primarchs implied), 9) soulmates feel each other's pain/physical sensations


End file.
